Leaning into her touch, I closed my eyes. What if I accepted her help and let myself dream for just a moment?
I spent the rest of the day with that question on my mind, and when evening rolled around, I emailed Trinity to ask for a week off before I started working with The Mycophiles. My excuse was having Adeline back in town, but that was only half the truth.
The other half was that I was finally ready to imagine a future bigger than the one I’d told myself I deserved.
I wished I could say I spent my days off having fun with Ade and the guys, but in reality, I spent a lot of time alone in my room. I moped. I thought about Mase and Kaz. I refused to check my phone in fear I’d see their messages or read a news article about their deal. I cried a lot. I slept even more. And during rare moments of clarity between all those other things, I jotted down a bunch of notes in a notebook Abel let me borrow.
The first was a list of things I enjoyed.
Polaroids. Strong coffee. Family. Good friends. Golden hour. Noticing the small things.
The second was a list of things I wanted.
Work that feels meaningful. My own safe place to live. Travel somewhere cool. Be free.
My pen hovered above the next blank line. The wild thing chanted two names on repeat.
When fighting her became too difficult, I chose to nap instead. Abel brought me lunch. Ade joined me for dinner and Netflix. Afterwards, she fell asleep with me, both of us curled up under the blanket, just like when we were kids.
29
MOLLY
I knewit was only a matter of time before my sister’s men got tired of me stealing her from them in the evenings.
On Wednesday morning, Cole charged into the room and pulled back the curtains. I mumbled some angry gibberish, my mind foggy with sleep, but he ignored my protests. “Enough of this.” He tugged the blanket off Ade and I, earning a pillow to the face courtesy of my sister. “This pity party has gone on for far too long.” He pointed at me. “You’re going to get out of bed, get dressed, and we’re going to have a fun day all together.”
“You’re a bully,” I told him, but he was already walking out, apparently satisfied with his work.
Ade yawned beside me. “You up for finally leaving the house?”
“I guess,” I said as I rubbed at my eyes. “I should probably check my phone. The last time I’d looked at it was the day I got here.”
“Sounds good,” Ade said. “I’m going to go clean up. I’ll see you at breakfast, deal?”
“Deal.” I trudged into the shower and sighed when the hot water hit my face.
Cole and Ezra appeared to be on breakfast duty when I finally emerged from my room. “Ade said you wanted your phone back. It’s on the island,” Cole called out over his shoulder while flipping a hotcake.
I grabbed the device only to discover it was dead. When the thing finally charged enough to turn on, my screen exploded with notifications.
Gnawing on my lip, I decided to ignore the messages from Kaz and Mason. My work email seemed a safer place to start.
A dozen or so unread emails. Not too bad. My attention caught on a message from Jenny. She rarely emailed me. What could she want? I opened it and began to read.
Hi Molly,
Thanks so much for talking to Mason about the dyslexia awareness initiative! We managed to turn his interview around super quick and get it into the video. It just went up on our YouTube. Here’s the link!
I tapped my index finger on the URL, ignoring how my heart sped up inside my chest.
The video opened to a montage of images with a voiceover talking about dyslexia. Impatiently, I dragged the dial at the bottom until the thumbnail flashed with a familiar face.
Mason and the interviewer, a dark-haired man I recognized from our PR team, sat in one of Hyperion’s conference rooms.
“Mason Fletcher is the drummer for Last Rites, a brilliant rock band that’s been making waves this summer,” the interviewer said. “You recently joined the Hyperion family, isn’t that right?”
“Yeah, just a few weeks ago, but it feels like it’s been much longer.”
